MMA Link Club: Dancing Anderson Silva, Cro Cop Talks Chael Sonnen and More

Anderson Silva Doesn’t Want to Sign Autographs, He Just Wants to Dance! (The Fight Nerd)It looks like that case of Bieber Fever that Anderson Silva recently contracted in Brazil has worsened, as the UFC Middleweight champion was caught dancing du…

Anderson Silva Doesn’t Want to Sign Autographs, He Just Wants to Dance! (The Fight Nerd)

It looks like that case of Bieber Fever that Anderson Silva recently contracted in Brazil has worsened, as the UFC Middleweight champion was caught dancing during an autograph session at this past weekend’s UFC Fan Expo in Houston. Silva danced the night away with fans, and if you wanted to get an autograph you had better be able to bust a move with the Brazilian fighter!

 

Injured Strikeforce Heavyweight Shane Del Rosario Shooting for 2012 Return to MMA (MMA Mania)

“It seems to be to me that every week or two I feel a bit stronger, my endurance gets a little better or I’m able to last a bit longer but I still have some bad days where I can’t get up or move very well, I start training and my back seizes up and I can’t do anything. The accident definitely affected my life to a great degree…since I’ve been injured, my doctor’s orders have been to just get healthy, nothing else and then I can start training. It’s been tough. I’m not supposed to do anything. I’m not allowed to do what I like to do, go to the beach and surf or anything. I’ve just gotta sit around and do nothing. The sitting around makes me go nuts. I’m looking, hopefully now to have my return in January or February.”

 

Jose Aldo Continues to Give Back to His Community (5th Round)

Following his unanimous-decision victory over Kenny Florian at UFC 136, Aldo has once again teamed up with Nova Uniao to raise money for the kids in his financially-plagued community. Aldo will be auctioning off two autographed items on eBay to help purchase equipment, gis and mats for the Nova Uniao Community Program.

 

Quote of the Day: Cro Cop Says Sonnen is Slow and Has the IQ of a Kid’s Shoe Size (CagePotato)

“There is an old proverb that says: ‘Don’t argue with a fool. People won’t be able to tell the difference.’ I’ve always upheld to that. I never wanted to lower myself to that level…I’m not the first one he has taken a shot at. I had the opportunity when I was in the United States to ask some people who work for the UFC, ‘Is this man crazy or is he just craving attention?’ A man higher up in the UFC told me, ‘He’s both,’ which means he is crazy and is also craving attention,” Filipovic explained. “I’m not mad at him. I’m really not mad at this Sonnen character.”

 

My First Fight: Rich Franklin (MMAFighting)

“This is how dumb I was: We come out and we’re mixing it up, and I end up taking him down. I’m kind of cross-mounted on him and I have a submission, but I let it go and go to another submission, and I have a shoulder lock almost completely locked out, but then I thought, you know, I trained all these months, all these years, for a 30-second fight? I’m going to let him up. So I just let it go, and the crowd—all 200 of them or whatever it was—went from screaming and yelling to completely speechless.”

 

Never Fear, Machida Is Here with Today’s LOL Funny Momen(MiddleEasy)

If you don’t know what it means to get “son’d,” then take a glimpse at this picture of Lyoto Machida. If we want to get really technical, Rashad Evans actually gets double son’d in this picture. The first son-ing is in the now infamous picture of a stanky-leg Rashad Evans KO via Machida’s left fist. The second instance of son-ing occurs when a smiling Machida autographs his name across a picture of that very KO. Maybe this should be known as getting “stepson’d.” Ouch.

 

Back to Basics: Takeaways from UFC Shifting PPV Start Times Back to 10 PM EST (Fight Opinion)

The move to get prelims going on TV at 9 p.m. EST and PPV start backs time to 10 p.m. EST is probably the right move, although I would say that upping the start time still does not address the fact that MMA will always be a niche sport, especially during the fall and winter, when you are competing against college football and other live sporting events on television.

 

Ariel Helwani’s Official MMA Rankings (NBC Sports)

There have been 11 events since we last issued our rankings, so lots of activity across the board.

 

Hundreds of Fans Attend Fedor vs. Monson Autograph-Signing Session (Photo Gallery) (LowKick)

Hundreds of fans attended the Fedor Emelianenko vs. Jeff Monson autograph-signing session held in the “Gallery” shopping mall in St. Petersburg, Russia. Earlier that day, M-1 Global also held their second pre-fight press conference, also in St. Petersburg, with Jeff Monson and Fedor Emelianenko sharing more of their thoughts about the November 20th bout.

 

Payout Analysis: The Strikeforce Death Knell? (MMA Payout)

Using publicly available data, we took a closer look at the performance of the two Strikeforce ownership groups, Silicon Valley and Zuffa/Forza. We sampled data from the last nine events under Silicon Valley ownership, between October 9, 2010 and March 25, 2011, that included five major Tier-1 events and four smaller Tier-2 Challengers events. We compared the average TV ratings, attendance, gate and payroll to the first nine events under Zuffa ownership, between April 1, 2011 and September 23, 2011, that included four major Tier-1 events and five Tier-2 events.

 

Upset Alert: Why Lyoto Machida Will Beat Jon Jones (Five Ounces of Pain)

I may be wrong, as I’ve certainly been wrong about Machida before. but Jones has appeared virtually unstoppable since arriving in the UFC. However, the same was said about Machida during his run up to the title. MMAth certainly doesn’t help me, since Machida lost to Shogun and Jones beat Shogun with ease. Machida’s mystique has already been cracked, yet Jones appears to be Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America every time he’s in the cage.

So, why do I think “The Dragon” will dethrone “Bones” Jones?

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com